Thursday, April 06, 2006 E-Mail this article to a friend Printer Friendly Version
HERE & THERE: India — tradition and progress —Razi Azmi
Throughout India, juxtaposed with tradition, superstition, religiosity, poverty and squalor, there is progress, modernity, prosperity and tolerance. Many Hindus are deeply religious, but they pursue their varying creeds in individual and personal ways, as opposed to the dogmatic, congregational and collective rituals of Muslims. There is a deity here and an idol there, and a bow or a nod to the god
Any visitor to India is surprised by the legions of cows that hang around the streets. As soon as they cease to be productive, cows and bulls are abandoned by their owners to fend for themselves. They are too costly to be fed and too holy (gau-mata or mother-cow) to be converted into food.
The street, then, becomes their home. Surviving on garbage and evidently malnourished, they are susceptible to diseases and often have open sores, from illnesses as well as collisions with all kinds of vehicles. The roads are littered with cow dung and their urine flows freely. The wheels of passing vehicles spread them over the road like butter and jam over toast.
Throughout India, juxtaposed with tradition, superstition, religiosity, poverty and squalor, there is progress, modernity, prosperity and tolerance.
Many Hindus are deeply religious, but they pursue their varying creeds in individual and personal ways, as opposed to the dogmatic, congregational and collective rituals of Muslims. There is a deity here and an idol there, and a bow or a nod to the god (or goddess) of this or that, even from a distance, suffices for most Hindus most of the time.
Many temples, mosques and shrines have become commercial enterprises for those who have the good fortune or the muscle power to control them. Kolkata’s most important temple, Kalighat, is no exception.
My Western travel guide had warned: “Avaricious priests will try to whisk you downstairs to confront the dramatic monolithic image of the terrible goddess in the basement, with her huge eyes and bloody tongue”. As expected, a priest advised me that offering a coconut, one kilo of sweets, some flowers and Rs 521 in cash would achieve all my wishes.
As I approached the Kalighat temple, I saw destitutes begging for alms and prostitutes “linger[ing] on the thoroughfares and bridges offering their services in tragic, grimy circumstances”. I overheard one prostitute tartly tell her prospective customer, who was obviously a hard bargainer: “Thank god, I have not yet been reduced to begging”.
At the Ajmer shrine of renowned Muslim saint Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti, khadims are likewise wont to milk pilgrims. Here, too, I had been forewarned by my guidebook: “Entering the dargah, you’re likely to be stopped by stern-looking young men claiming they are ‘official guides’. In fact, they are khadims, hereditary priests operating in much the same way as Hindu pujaris, leading pilgrims through rituals in the sacred precinct in exchange for donations”. Generous donations and offerings were supposed to materialise all my wishes.
There is a large board at the entrance to the shrine promoting the khadims in these unabashedly self-serving words: “Khadims relations with mazar-e-aqdas (holy shrine) is not only ancient but also intimate... [They] have right to receive nazr-o-niyaz (offerings) of Huzoor Syedna Khwaja Gharib Nawaz (RA).”
India’s Muslim population is highly conspicuous. Mosques, old and new, are everywhere — north, south, east and west. In most Indian cities, towns and villages the muezzin’s call to prayer (azaan) is broadcast from loudspeakers mounted on minarets of mosques. An hour’s drive from Benaras, I saw the massive new building of a madrassa, comparable in size with the largest in Pakistan.
One of Delhi’s main railway stations is named Hazrat Nizamuddin, after the well-known saint whose shrine is nearby. Akbar road is one of the main thoroughfares of New Delhi. Other roads are named after Babar, Feroz Shah, Sher Shah, Shahjahan, Tughlak, Lodi, Bahadur Shah Zafar, even Aurangzeb, the Mughal emperor best known for his intolerance of Hinduism.
On the road north and east from Benaras one passes Muhammadabad, Fatehabad, etc. Among other district and town names in India are: Ghaziabad, Ghazipur and Fatehpur, Aurangabad, Ahmadnagar and Ahmadabad, not to mention Aligarh and Allahabad.
Railway stations in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have their names written in Urdu, besides English and Hindi, as are all street names in Delhi. Even Benaras Hindu University has a thriving Arabic, not to mention Urdu, department.
There are extremist Hindus just as there are fanatical Muslims. But one is struck by the tolerance of the vast majority of Hindus towards Muslims and their religious places and practices. Many Hindus are known to patronise Muslim shrines, such as Khwaja Muinuddin Chishti’s in Ajmer, Hazrat Nizamuddin’s in Delhi, Shaikh Salim Chishti’s near Agra and Baba Haji Ali’s in Mumbai.
The Muslims of north India went through a very traumatic experience on account of partition in 1947, with towns and villages depopulated and families split. There was hardly a Muslim family in UP and Bihar which had not lost one or more of its members owing to migration to Pakistan. The emigration had devastating personal, social and political effects on those who remained in India by choice or circumstance.
With time, however, the trauma and scars of partition have healed. Indian Muslims now are self-contained with shrinking ties to their relatives across the border in Pakistan. As families and family ties within India have expanded, and the partition generation is ageing and dying, Indian Muslims are increasingly Indo-centric, viewing Pakistan as just another country whose policies, if anything, cause them more harm than good.
Though under-represented in the civil services, police and the armed forces, Muslims are doing well in business, trades, craft, cinema and sports. Indeed, some have done exceptionally well. India’s richest man, Wipro Ltd Chairman Azim Premji, is a Muslim. Worth over $8 billion, he was ranked No 38 on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s richest people last year.
In at least one temple and at the back of countless trucks I saw, written in Hindi, “hum sub ka maalik ek” (we all belong to the same Creator). But, regardless of what some truckers and priests might declare and the state might decree, old habits and social stratifications die hard.
The quota system enforced by the government is heavily tilted in favour of the lower castes and dalits (untouchables), but life in many Indian villages and towns is still influenced by the caste system to a certain degree. It is worth mentioning that India’s last president, KR Narayanan, was a dalit.
But India is certainly changing, although BJP’s election slogan of “India shining” may have been a gross exaggeration.
Bangalore and Hyderabad are second only to California’s Silicon Valley in Information Technology. If Bollywood competes with Hollywood, quantitatively at least, some Indian television channels are nearly as good as their Western counterparts in news coverage and investigative reporting. Similarly, Indian English newspapers are comparable to their Western counterparts in both form and content.
Public call offices with the facility of international direct dialling are to be found in every nook and corner of the country. The phones are fully computerised, providing a printout of the duration and cost of the call as soon as it is terminated.
India looks like an unfolding success story. Gone are the days of the 1960s when some Western economists could joke about a sluggish “Hindu rate of growth”, as distinct from capitalist and communist rates of growth.
The recent adoption of sound economic policies, supported by a thriving democratic dispensation, a powerful civil society, and a secular ethos, assure steady progress. I conclude this series with the words that I used at the outset: incredible India!
